Gaming on the go used to mean lugging around a heavy laptop or packing a battery-hogging portable gaming system in your pocket. The smartphone revolution changed all that. Now, hundreds of millions of people around the world have a decently powerful gaming system in their pocket at all times. It just happens to make phone calls, send text messages, play music, run productivity apps, give directions, take pictures, and perform a host of other functions, too.

While early smartphone developers often struggled to create games that made good use of the systems’ touchscreen and tilt-based controls, game developers eventually got the hang of the new medium. They're creating some interesting experiences that just aren’t available on more traditional platforms. Mobile gaming is no longer about mindless time-wasters (though there are still plenty of those to while away the time when you're standing in line at the DMV). There are full-fledged RPGs, adventure games, multi-level platform games, 3D action games, and more—all ready to amuse you, all at costs usually much lower than retail games.

Platform picking

The first and possibly most important decision you’ll make regarding a gaming smartphone is which platform to choose. While each has its strengths and weaknesses, iOS is currently the best mobile platform for gaming. Sure, "best" is a subjective thing, but the reasoning here comes down to game selection—iOS has by far the most exclusive games, including many of the most critically acclaimed games, across all mobile platforms. This is partly a function of the iPhone getting a head start on competing platforms in the market, partly due to fragmentation of the Android market into multiple carrier- and phone-specific stores until relatively recently, and partly a result of having a user base that seems more interested in spending money on games. Regardless of the reason, it is what it is.

Android’s selection of games has definitely improved in the last year or so, but practically every Android game we found that was worth playing was also available on iOS (or was a thinly veiled copy of a game that is also available on iOS). Windows Phone has a small selection of decent exclusive games from Microsoft Studios (some of which are highlighted here), but none of them are really strong enough to serve as a “system seller” that would sway us from the iPhone’s much more varied game collection.

There are also exclusive games for certain brands of Android phones. Those with an Nvidia Tegra graphics chip built in have access to titles offered through the Tegra Zone, but most of these are simply HD versions of games available on non-Tegra Android phones (or iOS phones). The titles don’t look appreciably better than high-end games running on the iPhone 5. Sony’s Xperia line (including the button-sporting Xperia Play), also offers some worthwhile exclusive games, including classics from the original PlayStation library.

All that said, Android and Windows Phone do offer a few advantages over iOS. On Android, the biggest advantage is the ability to sideload homebrew games that aren’t offered through the official store—no jailbreaking required. This makes Android the platform of choice for developers who want to use classic gaming emulators, or for games that might otherwise run afoul of official App Store rules.

Windows Phone is the only platform that allows games to connect to your Xbox Live account. Users earn Achievement Points that add to the same gamerscore total used on Xbox 360 and “Xbox on Windows” PC games, and they can easily connect with friends in certain multiplayer titles. Overall, though, the Windows Phone game selection is the weakest of the three platforms. The platform's youth and incompatibility with the existing library of previous "non-8" Windows Phone apps means that the available selection of games is still small.

From a technical standpoint, the performance of various mobile games depends more on the specific phone you choose than the underlying platform. The vast majority of mobile games won’t tax any hardware released in the last two years, but certain games with high-end 3D graphics might require recent hardware. I couldn’t recognize much difference in performance between iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8 handsets when comparing the latest hardware on high-end games.

Games!

There are so many games available on the various mobile app stores that it can be hard to know where to start. Here are a few dozen recommendations that should have you well on your way. Some of these games pack a pretty heavy graphical punch and will really show off your phone's CPU and GPU—they can also drain your battery pretty quickly, so be mindful when you're sitting down for that two-hour train ride!

Word games

Letterpress.

Games that involve manipulating letters into words are a major force on mobile phones. Perfect for whiling away a few minutes or playing asynchronously with friends over a mobile network, here is a few that stand out from the pack.

Letterpress (iOS, free): Kind of like Boggle meets Risk. Make words on a 5x5 grid to secure those spaces for your side. Surround a letter to protect it from being taken by your opponent. As much about spatial relations as vocabulary skills.

Scramble with Friends (iOS, Android, $2.99): A well-designed Boggle variant that lets you compete for high scores against the Internet or pass-and-play with a nearby friend.

Wordament (Windows Phone, free): A lot like Scramble, but exclusive to Windows Phone. Gives bonuses for certain types of words and letters.

Puzzlejuice (iOS, $1.99): An insane mix of Tetris, Boggle, and SameGame. Drop colored Tetris pieces to make lines or matching color groups, which turn into letters. Find words in the letters to get points and clear the board. Great touchscreen controls and a frenetic pace.

Spelltower (iOS, $1.99): Find words to clear tiles from a board that slowly rises to the top of the screen.

Quarrel (iOS, $2.99): Find a better anagram than your opponent to take over their bit of land with your invading forces. The strength of your army determines the number of letters you get. A great mix of spelling and strategy.

Adventure games

Infinity Blade II.

You wouldn't think tiny smartphone screens would be ideal for games based on epic storytelling and exploration, but some of the most exciting games in the genre have come to the small touchscreens in recent years.

Infinity Blade II (iOS, $6.99): One of the most epic games on the iPhone. Swipe and tap to block, dodge, and attack huge fantasy enemies rendered in stunning 3D. The gameplay feels a bit like Punch Out!!, but the beautiful environments and reincarnation-themed RPG exploration give it a good bit of depth.

Waking Mars (iOS, Android, $4.99): Guide the first explorer on Mars as you study and help grow the planet's interesting flora and fauna.

Bastion (iOS, $4.99): An excellent conversion of the console action-adventure. Listen to extremely evocative, personalized narration as you explore monster-filled levels that form around you as you walk. Some of the best environment and sound design on the system.

Walking Dead (iOS, first episode free, $14.99 for episodes 2-5): A completely fresh take on the point-and-click adventure. Survive the zombie apocalypse by making legitimately tough moral choices that have a long-lasting and wide-reaching impact on the way the story continues to develop. Some of the best writing and dialogue delivery on any game on any system. Headphones are a must.

The Room(iOS, $1.99): Tap and swipe at the screen to unlock the secrets of an intricately designed (and beautifully rendered), cryptic 3D puzzle table, which slowly reveals its secrets to tell a chilling backstory. Some excellent, outside-the-box puzzle design combined with wonderful animation.

Action games

BitPilot.

In some ways, smartphone touchscreens aren't ideal for controlling games that require quick reflexes and detailed visual acuity. These games have gotten over those limitations to provide great, arcade-style action without tactile controls.

Bit Pilot (iOS, $1.99): Navigate your ship across the void of space, dodging asteroids and laser blasts that get increasingly harder the longer you survive. Some of the best action game controls on the iPhone, letting you swipe to delicately control your direction and momentum. Recalls addictive classic arcade games like Robotron 2112.

Super Crate Box (iOS, $1.99): Jump around a construction site and destroy a never-ending onslaught of enemies with a wide variety of weapons found in boxes. In an interesting twist, you don’t get points for killing enemies or surviving, but for opening up new randomized weapons, requiring an ever-changing strategy.

Super Hexagon (iOS, $0.99): The ultimate test of pure reflexes. Tap the sides of the screen to navigate a small, triangular ship through trippy, pulsating walls narrowing in from the edge of the screen. A driving soundtrack.

Pix’n Love Rush(iOS, Android $2.99): Simple yet incredibly endearing platform game with an old school aesthetic. Jump through a semi-randomized set of auto-scrolling levels, collecting coins and throwing spitballs at hovering bats. Demands constant replays to perfect your movements and get new high scores.

Edge (iOS, Android, $2.99): Incredibly original puzzle-exploration game where you control a cube rolling end over end across some very inventive levels. Lots of challenges.

Z0MB1ES (on teh ph0ne) (Windows Phone, $2.99): A basic dual-stick shooter with a good balance of weapons and enemies.

Age of Zombies (iOS, Android, $0.99): Another dual stick shooter, with expressive graphics and well designed weapons and levels.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Force = Mass x Acceleration) (iOS, $3.99): The long title hides one of the best tilt-based games on the iPhone. Angle your iPhone to guide a falling base jumper from a first-person perspective, coming close to buildings and outcroppings to score points. Excellent level design and tight controls make this a standout.

Osmos (iOS, Android, $2.99): In this unique game, you tap the screen to shoot off tiny bits of your spherical body in order to move. The goal is to swallow up smaller blobs to increase your size while avoiding larger blobs that can swallow you up.Up next: Puzzle titles, multiplayer games, and more.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

It's humorous to me how the only really great category of games is just glossed over with only the slightest of mentions since it's pretty much Android only: classic console emulation.

The library of actual excellent games (as opposed to the farmville'esque time wasters you generally get from the native stores for each platform) for the Android platform is unparalleled thanks to the ability to run emulation. NES, SMS, GB, GBA, PS1, SNES, GEN, etc

Some posters ask questions that are answered in the introduction to the article, what's up with that?

(Read the 'Platform picking' section to see what Kyle says about Android and exclusives.)

With the thousands upon thousands of games available, I imagine that no two people (on any platform) would pick the same list of games and favourites will always be left out, but I'm sad to see no love for DoodleJump, Orbital, or Tilt to Live (though I recall it being positively reviewed on As once upon a time) – three great wee games that are perfect for when you've got five minutes to fill. Canabalt started out fun, but got repetitive very quickly. DoodleJump has a lot more variety and a fun aesthetic.

Armed! (Windows Phone): 3D turn based strategy game with RTS elements and multiplayer. Also compatible with the Windows 8 version.

All of Gamelofts AAA clones for iOS/Android (and soon Windows phone) such as Modern Combat and NOVA are also pretty amazing, if only for presentation alone. Also real time fps action on your phone is impressive, although a bit clunky.

And I agree with the above, Emulators are worth mentioning in their own section as they are nearly 100% exclusive to Android (there is a decent GBA emulator for Windows Phone called Purple Cherry) and they score very highly on the "mind blowing" scale when showing off to friends.

It's humorous to me how the only really great category of games is just glossed over with only the slightest of mentions since it's pretty much Android only: classic console emulation.

The library of actual excellent games (as opposed to the farmville'esque time wasters you generally get from the native stores for each platform) for the Android platform is unparalleled thanks to the ability to run emulation. NES, SMS, GB, GBA, PS1, SNES, GEN, etc

Agree. At least some mention of it at the very least. iphone has the MAME, tho only offers free games with it.

Having only recently switched to a Smartphone (Galaxy SIII) and being a serious PC gamer, I was quite interested in this article. However, it turns out I was wrong, as there is but one game recommended for Android in the only category of interest to me: Adventure games.

I take this comment as an opportunity to ask for good suggestions on the SIII knowing that I have no interest for either puzzle games or time wasters (I’d rather read) and that on the PC, I enjoy the following games: X-com, Civ V, The Witcher 2, Torchlight 2, WoW… (to name recent titles).

So people think that pirating ROMs (yeah, I'm *sure* you own all those games...) from sketchy malware-prone underground sites to run in emulation on Android beats native games downloaded from the platform's store?

It's humorous to me how the only really great category of games is just glossed over with only the slightest of mentions since it's pretty much Android only: classic console emulation.

The library of actual excellent games (as opposed to the farmville'esque time wasters you generally get from the native stores for each platform) for the Android platform is unparalleled thanks to the ability to run emulation. NES, SMS, GB, GBA, PS1, SNES, GEN, etc

Good point (well, not the part about the "only" great category, but that's highly subjective ;-) ). With an almost as sizeable host of emulation options for iOS as well (ScummVM, SNES, NES, GB and GBA), emulated games most probably deserve their own category.

I would like to give a shoutout to Armed ( http://armedgame.com ). It is a multiplayer turn based strategy (though it is more of an RTS but I don't want to explain in details here). The game is tweaked for mobile touch devices and is remarkably deep for a mobile game. In fact this is the most serious mobile game I have encountered (I haven't played Hero Academy though). You can think of Armed as a mobile StarCraft. It has strong competitive roots (in fact there is no campaign) and everyone who loves competitive strategy games will like it.

The game is currently available for Windows Phone and Windows 8 and is in beta for iOS. The devs aim to keep all the versions in sync so there is cross-platform multiplayer.

If you consider yourself a competitive/hardcore gamer this is THE mobile game to try.

P.S. I believe talking about WP gaming and not mentioning Armed is absurd. Armed is genre defining game.

It's humorous to me how the only really great category of games is just glossed over with only the slightest of mentions since it's pretty much Android only: classic console emulation.

The library of actual excellent games (as opposed to the farmville'esque time wasters you generally get from the native stores for each platform) for the Android platform is unparalleled thanks to the ability to run emulation. NES, SMS, GB, GBA, PS1, SNES, GEN, etc

Good point (well, not the part about the "only" great category, but that's highly subjective ;-) ). With an almost as sizeable host of emulation options for iOS as well (ScummVM, SNES, NES, GB and GBA), emulated games most probably deserve their own category.

Considering you need the hassle of a jailbroken iOS device to load just about all emulators (or a paid developer with the SDK to compile and sign your own from source) iOS is in a different boat than android, which has actual emulators on the play store, or other good ones you can sideload if desired.

meh, most of these cost money. Since I usually play mobile games for 3 min before I'm bored and never touch them again I'm not even spending $2 on any of them. 99 cents usually also prevent me from trying it. Rarely worth it.

(and before someone says that's less than a cup of coffee; I drink the coffee at work, for free!)

Yeah; I can't ever see myself paying for a mobile title even if it's only £1. A focus on the decent free titles would've been far more useful, really.

Ayjona wrote:

jackstrop wrote:

It's humorous to me how the only really great category of games is just glossed over with only the slightest of mentions since it's pretty much Android only: classic console emulation.

The library of actual excellent games (as opposed to the farmville'esque time wasters you generally get from the native stores for each platform) for the Android platform is unparalleled thanks to the ability to run emulation. NES, SMS, GB, GBA, PS1, SNES, GEN, etc

Good point (well, not the part about the "only" great category, but that's highly subjective ;-) ). With an almost as sizeable host of emulation options for iOS as well (ScummVM, SNES, NES, GB and GBA), emulated games most probably deserve their own category.

I'm willing to bet it's missing because it would necessarily involve discussion of illegal practices like finding ROMs one way or another. Personally, I think it's faintly ridiculous that it's probably illegal to source ROMs for games & systems which are no longer produced or commercially sold anyway, but there you have it.

I take this comment as an opportunity to ask for good suggestions on the SIII knowing that I have no interest for either puzzle games or time wasters (I’d rather read) and that on the PC, I enjoy the following games: X-com, Civ V, The Witcher 2, Torchlight 2, WoW… (to name recent titles).

Unfortunately, this is the genre where smartphone games are the most lacking. I think a lot of it has to do with developers not having a good idea yet how to implement controls for this sort of game on a touchscreen. Still, there are a few which are OK: In the Torchlight vein, try The Bard's Tale. In the X-Com vein, try Hunters: Episode OneFor Civ, try Battle for Wesnoth.

Don't write off time-wasters completely - take a look at Polara. It's a deceptively simple game, with only two controls, but for that, the game is still varied, interesting and extremely challenging.

And that's not to get into the ports of older games to mobile that work out nicely - for example, Another World, Broken Sword, Sonic CD, Max Payne, GTA3, various Square Enix games (Chrono Trigger, I'd kill for Secret of Mana, btw!).

The platform's youth and incompatibility with the existing library of previous "non-8" Windows Phone apps means that the available selection of games is still small.

Uhhh what? Is this saying that games designed for Windows Phone 7 don't run on Windows Phone 8? If so, that's completely wrong and one message to Peter would have answered that in a few seconds. The games (and other apps) from WP7 that don't work on WP8 are small in number and is no different than any other platform's causalities during a major upgrade.

I would like to give a shoutout to Armed ( http://armedgame.com ). It is a multiplayer turn based strategy (though it is more of an RTS but I don't want to explain in details here). The game is tweaked for mobile touch devices and is remarkably deep for a mobile game. In fact this is the most serious mobile game I have encountered (I haven't played Hero Academy though). You can think of Armed as a mobile StarCraft. It has strong competitive roots (in fact there is no campaign) and everyone who loves competitive strategy games will like it.

The game is currently available for Windows Phone and Windows 8 and is in beta for iOS. The devs aim to keep all the versions in sync so there is cross-platform multiplayer.

If you consider yourself a competitive/hardcore gamer this is THE mobile game to try.

P.S. I believe talking about WP gaming and not mentioning Armed is absurd. Armed is genre defining game.

I second this. Armed! is amazing and with the code bases in sync you can play multiplayer across any of the devices.

I'd probably add Cut the Rope to the puzzles list and Angry Birds to the mindless time wasters list, but I'm sure everybody knows about them already. Still, they're both quite well done, and if this is supposed to be a primer as to what's available on a smartphone, they're worth mentioning.

The one that's bothered me the most is Pirates. I do have some of the others as well, but I haven't wanted to install them on the new phone. Some of those games are about building up a lot of progress over time, and since the game saves don't transfer, I haven't been too keen on starting over. (This goes for a handful of games that *did* survive the upgrade from 7 to 8 that I haven't bothered reinstalling, too.)

Maybe it is because of the limited number of categories in the article, but most of the games I play a lot of didn't make it into the article. These are probably the ones I spend the most time playing:

meh, most of these cost money. Since I usually play mobile games for 3 min before I'm bored and never touch them again I'm not even spending $2 on any of them. 99 cents usually also prevent me from trying it. Rarely worth it.

(and before someone says that's less than a cup of coffee; I drink the coffee at work, for free!)

Thank you for your most valuable contribution, Mr. Scrooge.Hopefully you have clients/customers that pay for whatever you do ...

The Room ate my brain over the holidays. I only needed one hint when there was a part that used the tilt sensor. I forgot the iPad had one, so I was swiping around the screen without effect with it held vertically.

Honest question: do any of you talking about console emulators on your Android phones seriously play them? Not fire them up to show your friends how cool it is that they work, but really play for hours? Because virtual controls drive me nuts, they're so inferior to the original controls that all I get is frustrated.

That's leaving aside the not-so-minor issue of the fact that all of those ROMs are in a real grey area, legally speaking, at best. I believe in emulation, I personally think it's super important, but it's hard to see how we could recommend it as a publication. (Note that I'm just putting forth my own opinion, not making some kind of official statement on the matter. )

Also, minor note: the opening image for this story is playing Pudding Monsters (iPhone | iPad | Android). Not super deep, and only has three worlds now, but for 99 cents I enjoyed it as a time waster, has a ton of charm (from the Cut the Rope people) and the history of the developer tells me a lot more content is probably coming to it.

Honest question: do any of you talking about console emulators on your Android phones seriously play them? Not fire them up to show your friends how cool it is that they work, but really play for hours? Because virtual controls drive me nuts, they're so inferior to the original controls that all I get is frustrated.

Honest question: do any of you talking about console emulators on your Android phones seriously play them? Not fire them up to show your friends how cool it is that they work, but really play for hours? Because virtual controls drive me nuts, they're so inferior to the original controls that all I get is frustrated.

Yeah, I know about all that stuff. No thanks. I'm just never, ever, going to carry something like that around even if it worked great. And if I'm at home there are a ton of superior options. For me at least it's just a dead idea before it even leaves the gate.

Maybe Kyle thinks a phone is the wrong platform for RPGs. There's an argument to be made for that.Maybe he just didn't put it in the article because it's flaming and you wouldn't want to do that in an article.

Why not suggest a few tower defense games? I can't pretend to know the best ones, but they have short playtimes and are suitable for mobile play.Crystal Defenders (Square-Enix, $8)Crystal Defenders: Vanguard Storm (Square-Enix, $2)Fantasy Defense (PlayBean, free)